There are a lot of ideas to come out of the twentieth century, lots of new inventions and plans that made the world what it is today. There are advances in home construction, astronomy, biology, microbiology, medicine, sociology and more. But one of the most clever and useful ideas to come out of the twentieth century was and still is the entire concept of environmentalism. Now, environmentalism itself was not created solely in the twentieth century nor was it created in one time or in one place. The idea of keeping nature and the environment safe goes back hundreds of years and involves hundreds of cultures who all did their part to protect their small patch of the worldwide ecosystem. None of these efforts were altogether or all at once but they all did their part by recognizing that it’s better to treat natural resources with respect and care than it is to throw them all away and waste the ones you might personally think are worthless. It was in the mid century time period, however, that these ideas began to mutate quickly and grow exponentially into the type of advanced, academic and global environmentalism that we have today. Environmentalism as a discipline is huge now and incorporates hundreds of sub disciplines including sustainable aquaculture, renewable farming, forest conversation, ocean conservation, zoological protection and conservation and many others. One of the most underrated and interesting parts of the movement, however, is the idea of sustainable and green building and architecture. People have begun to realize that it may be possible to mimic nature in the very buildings and streets we use in our every day lives and it may even be possible to make it so that they need less and less energy to survive. Let’s take a look at this green revolution and how it might pertain to the cities of the future.
Making an Energy Efficient City
One of the center point objects for green and ecological construction research is how to build an energy efficient city. Building energy efficient towns and villages is completely fine but those take a slightly different approach and they are built with far fewer people in mind overall. Cities are a different animal altogether, both technologically and socially. For one, they have millions of people, sometimes tens of millions if we are talking the largest cities in the world. For another, some of these large global cities have infrastructure that is hundreds and hundreds of years old. This makes bringing cities into the future tricky as many of them have immense historical value just in terms of streets and buildings. By being careful and clever, however, there are many routes to making these cities as energy efficient and green as possible.
How to Start
There are many routes one can take to start making big cities energy efficient and not all of them have to be immense construction projects. You can start by building your own rooftop or window side garden for food. By using light construction materials and other easy to figure out objects, it should be no problem making a box or a row of boxes for you to plant soil within. It might seem like a little thing and it is by if more and more people in cities started planting rooftop gardens, it would help substantially reduce the amount of food consumed from rural areas. It may also even help clean the air, as plants absorb the carbon dioxide often found in the smog that hangs over larger cities.
New Buildings, New Places
Big projects matter just as much as small ones, from new skyscrapers to new sewers. More and more buildings today are being stocked with solar panels and other energy efficient devices that will help regulate temperature and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Even streets can be lined with these devices to help power lights and other service signs along their sides. Buildings can also be built to lower city temperatures and run on bio fuels such as algae and other types of energy giving simple lifeforms. The future is endless as long as we let it be endless. So we should!